Wow, very unfortunate circumstances...and this is why I recommend that food is not re-offered to other snakes. It's not such a big risk if you've had all
of your snakes for a long time and all appear healthy, but with a new snake- never. Many people DO re-offer rejected feeders & I've seen it mentioned in
posts all the time, but that doesn't make it a good practice as you've found out the "hard way".
Of all people, your vet would have the best info as to how long before symptoms of an RI show up in exposed snakes, but I think it depends on several things:
for one thing, on the individual health of each snake (how well their own immune system functions to resist getting sick), and secondly, on the virulence of
the pathogens themselves. We're coming on flu season for humans & every year, some get sick, some get sicker than others, some get sick faster than others,
and some never do...there's just too many variables to predict this very well. I think it's much the same for snakes?
The bright spot in all this is that your snake has responded well to the first antibiotic chosen, so hopefully any others that go on "sick call" will likewise do well.
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